Ponder these things: Do not dwell in the past

This article will be familiar to those who read Our Lady Queen of Angels’ bulletin. Several non-parisioners who received a copy of the bulletin encouraged me to put this article in the Daily World. So here it is. May we all know the freedom that comes from forgiving others.

The other day, I was visiting someone I have known practically all of my life and it was not a pleasant encounter.

Oh, it wasn’t anything personal, but he was stuck in the past. Admittedly, he was hurt and hurt very badly when he was much younger. In that brief encounter with him, he recounted to me the litany of hurts he has endured during life, blaming, blaming, blaming.

Now, this was not the first time I heard this story. To be honest, it was about the tenth time. I asked if he had ever sought counseling, but he responded, “They all tell me the same thing: Accept the brokenness and move on.”

But he can’t and, I think, he chooses not to. I believe he has become accustomed to the misery.

All of us have scars and brokenness from people and circumstances in our pasts. And when we hold on to these hurts, they continue to hurt us as they did even 20 years ago.

Certainly justice has to come into play, but pain has even trapped some who received the justice they had sought.

I know in my own life, which has had its share of losses and disappointments, I have always tried simply to accept what is. I simply have tried to surrender and say, “I lost in this situation and accept defeat.”

But, how hard it is for us to accept defeat? We still want to fight the past, forgetting that it is gone. Here, St. Paul’s words have always been such a comfort to me: “Therefore I am content with weakness, with insults, with distresses, with persecutions, with difficulties, for Christ’s sake; for when I am weak, then I am strong.” (2 Corinthians 12:10)

If you are holding a memory of ill that’s more than a day old, you are letting the past control you.

Accept that you were wronged, seek justice where you can but not revenge, then let it go and live in the present. What a gift we give ourselves when we choose to let go of the past and live in the present moment.

Monsignor Keith DeRouen is a Roman Catholic priest and the pastor of Our Lady Queen of Angels Catholic Church in Opelousas.